Chess Learning Management Website Comparisons

Am starting up a few elementary school (2nd-5th grade) chess clubs this Fall. Need to select a chess CLM system. Has anyone published their comparisons between the scholastic teaching tools and classroom (club) management offerings of Chessity, Chesskid, Chess4Life, Chessable, ChessMagnetSchool, Zoomchess, LiChess, LearningChess, etc? A side-by-side comparison? Anywhere?

Great question, I am following with interest. I tried Chesskid for my group then switched to Lichess.. The Chesskid had better training videos and a nice step by step progression for children. However it lacked the most basic elements. Kids in my Zoom class could not challenge each other to 5 and 10 minute games. The tournament function was buggy and didn't work. Lichess is great for challenging friends to any time control and widely used by clubs for tournaments. Even if its training mater does not look great. Lichess is also free.

Neither allow for one kid to practise simple checkmates or K+P vs K end games against each other, which is a shame. I have heard that chessity allows that but ghat it's paying and I haven't tried it. 

Have used Chessity and ChessKid before.  Chess4Life is my other primary candidate (love their video content and comprehensive lesson progression). About to go down the research rabbit hole.  Starting with criteria to evaluate and compare:

• Cost
• Appealing look, aesthetics
• Ease of use
• Accessibility for non-readers
• Can actually play live chess on the platform (and associated features)
• Slow (daily) chess play
• Tournaments
• Lessons: Content topics, content quality (Videos? Diagrams with voice-overs? Diagrams and written text only?)
• Gamification and mini-games
• Pre-set practice positions
• Reward systems
• Classroom monitoring tools
• Kid safety (chat, messaging)

Will report back when I emerge in a couple years. 

Just kidding. I'll have to make a choice before classes start in late September.

I, too, am following with interest. 

I'm interested too.

I tried Chesskid Adventure. Beautiful on the surface, but the goodness is only skin deep. There are characters that you can play against, that require more and more in house gold to buy a game with, I think sith bigger pay backs. It is set up so that you would think that there is progression with the more expensive characters being harder to beat. It's not the case though, they are all equally easy to beat, and so there is no progression. 

Only skin deep is a good description of chess. Com's sites aimed at children. How they set it up on chesskid so that one kid can't play any time control they like against another kid in the same club is beyond me. Do they have no feedback from actual chess coaches? 

chesskid works great for a k-8 chess club. unlike another poster here, i had no problems using chesskid to set up tournaments for my students. my complaint is that the number of lessons available for free has dropped drastically over the past year or so. the last time i had checked, you couldn't learn all of the rules of chess for free (through the video lessons). that being said, lichess is amazing, and has a CMS for teachers at https://lichess.org/class - teacher signup required - all features are free!

Thank you JKibbe,

That's a very useful link and useful feedback on how you found Chesskid tournaments. 

Report: Leaning against Chessity. Great content, good lessons and mini-games, good class management tools, but font is small, lessons are non-audible only, and interface could be more intuitive.

NM Elliott Neff (full disclosure: my former student eons ago) presented the Chess4Life tools to me in a Zoom conference.  Top notch in every way.  If a school wants a teacher to bring a chess program into their school, or a parent who is not knowledgeable about chess, than Chess4Life is superb.  Great class management tools, well designed curriculum, lesson plans, paper handouts and online drills that correspond to each lesson make life great for the teacher.  Throughout is the emphasis on transferring chess lessons to ten life skills (goal setting, planning, focus, Can Do attitude, learn from defeats, respect, sportsmanship, teamwork etc.) And as part of their deal with schools who license their program, their staff makes themselves available for any necessary hand-holding.  Chess4Life's system is not really designed for individual membership, rather, it's designed for adoption by larger entities: clubs, schools, districts. Now, since I'm a USCF Expert, have curriculum already, and my budget is small ... hmmm.  Still thinking.

That leaves ChessKid, the most famous and also strong in most areas.  The fact that they have "free" and "paid" levels allows me to pass off costs to parents.  I can set them up, and if the child shows interest, the parent can invest in the Gold membership.  Drawback to this setup: about 50% of our district kids qualify for free lunches, and I'm loathe to adopt a plan that sets up hurdles for them.

A fourth option I'm now looking at, based on your helpful posts above, is combining free Lichess with other free resources online (i.e. Chessable, YouTube Kids, other free materials in our Lounge forum.)  

And that's my pre-season report. 

P.S. Get Chess4Life's free "6 Keys to Running a Fun and Engaging Chess Club Meeting" in .pdf form here (sign up, they'll send you the pdf.) I found it very helpful. Here's their deceptively simple Club Meeting Plan sheet.